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Monkey Island 2: SE

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BOOYA!

I have to admit, I'm really digging the updated graphics. They fixed almost everything that was wrong with SMI:SE. I'm still a little unsure about Guybrush and Elaine (he looks feminine, she looks...angry), but all in all I'm very very happy and very, very excited.

See the official site to see the characters in motion. LeChuck's model in-game is spot-on. (Not so spot-on on the cover, unfortunately, but it's a downloadable game so meh.)

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Yeah the MI2 special edition is looking quite ok.

Of course there is no real point why to do the special edition, but it's always really nice to have the option to hear with the voices. I've always liked the voices they got to Monkey Island 3. Just re-releasing MI2 in Steam etc would have also been enough.

Now that the special edition is coming, I absolutely like the idea that this time also the original mode will have the speech option available.

The first special edition should've also had that. It would've been nice to have the original great graphics and still hear the voices.

I don't like the new cover so much, but even that looks better than the first one they made. I treasure Steve Purcell's original cover artwork too much that I can't really appreciate the new one.

Now to hope that after this LucasArts would make an original IP adventure game to test the waters, propably it would not work in the modern market, but you never know...

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Ugh. Nice backgrounds... but the characters look SO amateur. Hopefully the voices will be better than MI:SE, too.

What's this about "new puzzles"?!? (As mentioned on Mojo.) The game felt unfinished towards the end... have they tried to finish it off? (Pretty amazing, if so!)

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I'm ecstatic that they've been able to not make the designs horrendous this time around.

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Ugh. Nice backgrounds... but the characters look SO amateur. Hopefully the voices will be better than MI:SE, too.

What's this about "new puzzles"?!? (As mentioned on Mojo.) The game felt unfinished towards the end... have they tried to finish it off? (Pretty amazing, if so!)

The characters - apart from Guybrush and Elaine - look fine to me (Guybrush is a bit too boyish, Elaine a little too angry). LeChuck is a highlight.

I'm not sure about the puzzles. It's probably a joke - or, Schafer and Gilbert (who seems a bit involved) are fixing shit up. Not sure *what* they're fixing, as MI2 is a pretty complete experience - especially, I think, towards the end.

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Er, wow. That looks awesome. Really good to see the criticism was addressed so just like the original MI2 it will be better than its predecessor. :)

It's hard to see how fantastic the new art is on the official site, so get the high-resolution pack here:

http://www.lucasarts.com/company/vip/monkeyisland2.html

I agree that Guybrush looks a little soft-faced from the front (though that may be because I imagine the MI2 Guybrush looking older, whereas he's relatively youthful in the chronologically later CMI, EMI, and TMI... so I dunno), but all the other characters seem superb to me.

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Other interesting stuff is that apparently with the release comes some previously unreleased artwork from Steve Purcell and Peter Chan if I read correctly?

Also there is supposed to be some kind of developer commentary included? Oh hell that would be so sweet if there's commentaries from Ron and Tim in there also.

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What about Guybrush's beard :(

I think it looks fine this time around.

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It just occurred to me that the "puzzles" thing could be the long-lost "medium difficulty" mode.

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I'm not sure about the puzzles. It's probably a joke - or, Schafer and Gilbert (who seems a bit involved) are fixing shit up. Not sure *what* they're fixing, as MI2 is a pretty complete experience - especially, I think, towards the end.

In the last chunk of the game the designers stopped writing things for Guybrush to say. So everything became "Nice x" where "x" was the name of the object under the cursor. It really feels unfinished and I'd love for them to be able to go back and add the level of polish that's elsewhere in the game. I think it's been mentioned in several interviews that there was internal pressure not to spend too much time on the end -- as it was presumed not many people would see it.

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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It just occurred to me that the "puzzles" thing could be the long-lost "medium difficulty" mode.

That might be awesome. The other problem with MI2 was the extreme difficulty settings. Something in between -- with new puzzles? -- might be good.

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That cover looks like complete ass and Guybrush looks like a Final Fantasy dickwad.

But I'll admit, the art is shaping up much better this time around. I hope they either fired a lot of people or STOPPED FARMING THE SHIT OUT TO SINGAPORE FOR CHUMP CHANGE, but I doubt it.

Looking at the model sheets, which are great, I would say it's also nice that they apparently took the time to DRAW the characters this time around past the concept stage and show how the finished art will look instead of tracing around bad 3D models. I had back and forth arguments with dumbasses who think it's great for everyone to trace 3D models because it keeps things consistent, but MI:SE didn't end up anywhere near consistent and the characters were a stiff mess. Real drawings and animation by people who know how to draw and animate without tracing over anything will always triumph.

Anyway, I'm going to try to enjoy this one this time around, if only to get over my complete bitterness and anger towards the first remake. I'm already feeling the Monkey Island 2 atmosphere on this page even though I was dreading the worst. I hope no amateurish graphical mistakes appear this time around, as that stuff should have been properly patched in the first one. Still I don't want anymore remakes, though.

I'm also guessing the stiff animation by the characters on the website is probably stemming from Flash tweens done for the site and not representational of what will happen in the game.

Also there's going to be in-game commentary from the "game's creators!" I'm hoping it will be Grossman, Schafer, or Gilbert, but something tells me it could just be the Special Edition team. Also this time around we get to play the classic game with the voices!

And I'm also crossing my fingers that many problems will be addressed with the next MI:SE ports!

OKAY I THINK I"M HAPPY THIS TIME WEEEEEE! I hope it's not spoiled!

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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Yey! Guybrush actually looks a lot more Guybrushy this time around (although, weirdly enough, not so much Monkey Island 2 Guybrushy).

Also, yey! Old graphics with voiceovers!

New puzzles? Yey, maybe.

I ended up buying the first special edition on Steam when it was really cheap, but I haven't actually played it yet. This one seems definitely more interesting and I really hope it doesn't end up being crap.

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Also there's going to be in-game commentary from the "game's creators!" I'm hoping it will be Grossman, Schafer, or Gilbert, but something tells me it could just be the Special Edition team.

hehe. If the commentaries are gonna be from the special edition team, I'm going to shoot somebody.

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I hope they add more frames of animation to the characters this time around. No point bumping the graphical resolution if they shackle themselves to the exact same frame count used in the original game, as in my opinion it ends up looking much worse (I ended up playing MI: SE with the old graphics, which was kind of a pointless purchase considering I had the original sitting on a shelf right next to me).

Also, nostalgia may be clouding my judgment since it's been over 10 years since I played it, but I think MI3 had the best art style. I wish Lucasarts just used that as the base look for these remakes.

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I hope they add more frames of animation to the characters this time around. No point bumping the graphical resolution if they shackle themselves to the exact same frame count used in the original game, as in my opinion it ends up looking much worse (I ended up playing MI: SE with the old graphics, which was kind of a pointless purchase considering I had the original sitting on a shelf right next to me).

I'd rather them not add frames, just because I think they would screw it up.

But does a low frame count really ruin stuff for you? There's tons of detailed animation out there that doesn't move beyond 8 frames a second and still looks good. Most classic film animation still runs on an average of 12fps.

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Weirdly I just started playing the first ME:SE yesterday for the first time. I find that it's actually easier to play the game in the original mode because all the actions are on screen, but it's also really damned boring as there's virtually no sound. The voices in the original mode for ME2:SE will hopefully fix that; or they could, you know, fix the interface on the new one.

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Based on the feedback they got from the first game, I'm sure that allowing new sound on old graphics was the first bullet point on their list for the sequel.

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I'd rather them not add frames, just because I think they would screw it up.

But does a low frame count really ruin stuff for you? There's tons of detailed animation out there that doesn't move beyond 8 frames a second and still looks good. Most classic film animation still runs on an average of 12fps.

For me it does. I don't need a Disney feature film level of quality, but most of the stuff in MI:SE could use a few inbetweens. Look at the pirate sitting in the barrel on the streets of Mêlée™ Island - He had 3 frames of animation and they probably moved at a rate of 1 frame per second. Same with Guybrush, he always looked like he was gliding on the ground since by the time his walk frame animation changed he was already 3 or 4 steps ahead.

Expecting Lucasarts to give every animated figure in the game 12 frames per second and lip-syncing in what's essentially a budget title is unrealistic, but keeping the same keyframes that worked when the game had a resolution of 320x240 now that it can run in 1640x1080 makes the whole thing look at best like a slideshow. Even adding just one new frame between each of their keyframes would go a long way towards making the game animate a lot better.

This also bothered me with the Street Fighter II HD remake, but at least there Capcom had an excuse since adding more frames would break the game for high-level players.

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I've said it before, but I have no idea why resolution would come into the matter of amount of animation frames. Of course any good animation is going to be better appreciated at a higher resolution and be lost at a lower one, but good animation movement basically consists of showing the most effective movement with as little amount of frames as possible, no matter what resolution or medium you're working in. Overdrawing something is not usually desirable.

If people can animate with the frame count used on the special animations for the original Monkey Island for theatrical shorts on a big movie screen and MAKE IT LOOK GOOD (Check out both Dead Leaves and anything by Bill Plympton for reference), then I don't know why that would be such a monumental problem unless we are now so spoiled with every game running at 60 fps because of major usage of vector art, object tweens and 3D. A lot of the special animations in Monkey Island 1 are more than enough frames. If you just look at the amount of frames going into the cotton swab animation, for instance, people should be so lucky to get that today with hand drawn stuff in video games or movies.

A lot of the sort of animation tricks commonly used to make less frames look like more motion in the first Special Edition were faulted from bad character design, stiff poses, and just because they were tracing the damn things over ugly 3D models that were posed over the top of the original animation. Add that to the fact that they have things running on screen at a constant 30 fps creating a constant ugly juxtaposition, which the original Secret of Monkey Island did not have, like the smoother scrolling, as well as moving water and sky. To illustrate the juxtaposition problem further, movies like Steamboy are smart and reduce the frame output on their 3D rendered vehicle animations to match the frame rate of the rest of the movie. Movies like Disney's Atlantis have 3D vehicle animations running at full speed on some kind of ugly cel shade look while the drawn characters around it can't keep up.

I mean, the Special Edition team isn't really good at animating, which makes the lack of frames even more noticable especially considering the animation was all there in the first place, but I'll give them credit for at least creating individual frames and attempting to do it the more traditional, harder way, instead of doing cheap-out tweening digital puppet animation that is all too abundant in any game attempting 2D now. I think we would be worse off if they went that route with a low budget.

So I'll agree that the game would look nicer with more frames, but I just don't think the current team at LucasArts, consisting of some head artists over here and Singaporeans doing a majority of the work for cheap overseas, is really capable of significantly improving anything like that without making it worse. So I'm completely happy they aren't messing with that at least. But I'll never prescribe to the idea that more frames equals better animation, because you can fuck up animation with too many frames just as well.

I would suggest even looking at Curse of Monkey Island again as well, because while Guybrush has this ridiculously long walk cycle and moves way too slow because of it, many of the characters are hardly moving on many gameplay parts, with sometimes just their mouths flapping around only. Murray for instance is just basically one drawing with like 3 frames used over and over while you talk to him for 15 minutes at a time on some parts. It's really just about how you use what you have.

I'm also sick of people bringing up Street Fighter HD as an example too. With all of what I just said, part of the problem with that game is that it goes against what just about any of the great instructional animation books will tell you, which is that you will generally need to bump your frames up to 24fps (with traditional film frame rate as their reference) when lots of fast action is happening. You can't seriously expect fights to look nice when the fighters are just popping from an idle fight stance to a 1 to 2 frame kick.

No one is casually walking around and talking to people in Street Fighter. It's all about conserving your frame count to when it's needed. In a game like Street Fighter, if everyone is constantly in action there's not much conserving you can do. To me, it looked just about as silly as it now on SNES, but the difference is it was more understandable because they could only hold so much on a cartridge back then. Resolution had nothing to do with it.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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But does a low frame count really ruin stuff for you? There's tons of detailed animation out there that doesn't move beyond 8 frames a second and still looks good. Most classic film animation still runs on an average of 12fps.

But MI and MI2 don't run at 12fps, they run at something like 2.

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To clarify, I should say most classic animations were averaging closer to 12 drawings per second of film time, which was the general rule when nothing fast was happening and for walk cycles, but everything was still running at 24fps, which means they were shooting on 2s to fill the gaps. This is still a typical today and this is how any kind of traditional animation that is not done with vector art, polygons, or moving shapes are still based around.

But MI and MI2 don't run at 12fps, they run at something like 2.

But neither of those original games are running at 2 frames per second at all. How on earth would Guybrush get across the screen on a 7 frame walk cycle if he were only allowed to use 2 frames per second to do so? Besides, the answer is they are all running 30fps as their native NTSC environment. Just nothing is animated with a full 30 frames per second (which is too much to expect even now), although again, check out things like Guybrush getting into a cannon or using the Q-tip. That's a lot of sprites going on in a short time, which also add up to be pretty much 12 drawn frames a second or more, which is certainly not 2.

Maybe you are all expecting everything in the game to animate like the special animations and for everyone to have some constant smooth idle animations? Like I said, not even Curse of Monkey Island had tons of stuff going on at once and elaborate animation filling up every second of time. Many idle animations were nonexistant sometimes as well.

Reference: http://sdb.drshnaps.com/objects/17/1513/Sprite/GuybrushPart1.png

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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Resolution matters as a higher one means the figures have to "travel" a bigger distance to get to the same place. Thus it looks more jittery than in a lower res if you keep the same animation grid for both.

In other words: "Size also causes some serious animation problems. Let's say you have a walk cycle at 16x16 (like Link from the original Legend of Zelda). You can coax a fairly smooth walk animation out of this character with just 4 frames, because his legs only move a pixel or two each frame. However, at 32x32 the legs will be moving much farther, up to 10 or 12 pixels per frame if you only have 4 frames. To maintain relative smoothness, you have to bump it up to at least 6 frames. Not only are you painting 4 times as many pixels per frame now, but you need to add 50% additional frames!"

good animation movement basically consists of showing the most effective movement with as little amount of frames as possible, no matter what resolution or medium you're working in. Overdrawing something is not usually desirable.

Wait, so we are in agreement. My problem with the animation in MI:SE isn't technical (Namely, that it doesn't have enough inbetweens, although that would be one way to solve the issue), it's that I felt it doesn't convey movement effectively. Your mileage may vary, of course, but for me it stuck out like a sore thumb.

Again, I'm not expecting 24 frames of animation (Although I wouldn't complain if I got that), but if you're going to update the graphics why not give the character animation a little love as well? I am focusing on the smoothness of animation, but I could also mention how lifeless the characters look as they have no bounce or weight.

Just imagine remaking Quake II, adding high poly models but keeping the same low res textures. That's not far from what Lucasarts did.

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